Peace with the Planet
We must mobilise our civilisation with the urgency and resolve that have previously been seen only when nations mobilised for war.
WE, THE HUMAN species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilisation that is gathering ominous and destructive potential. But there is hopeful news as well: we have the ability to solve this crisis and avoid the worst of its consequences, if we act boldly, decisively and quickly.
However, despite a growing number of honourable exceptions, too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.”
So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations trapping more and more heat from the sun.
As a result, the Earth has a fever. And the fever is rising. The experts have told us it is not a passing affliction that will heal by itself. We asked for a second opinion. And a third. And a fourth. And the consistent conclusion, restated with increasing alarm, is that something basic is wrong. We are what is wrong, and we must make it right.
In the last few months, it has been harder and harder to misinterpret the signs that our world is spinning out of kilter. Major cities in North and South America, Asia and Australia are nearly out of water due to massive droughts. Desperate farmers are losing their livelihoods. Peoples in the frozen Arctic and on low-lying Pacific islands are planning evacuations of places they have long called home. Unprecedented wildfires have forced half a million people from their homes in one country and caused a national emergency that almost brought down the government in another. Climate refugees have migrated into areas already inhabited by people with different cultures, religions and traditions, increasing the potential for conflict. Stronger storms in the Pacific and Atlantic have threatened whole cities. Millions have been displaced by massive flooding in South Asia, Mexico, and eighteen countries in Africa. As temperature extremes have increased, tens of thousands have lost their lives. We are recklessly burning and clearing our forests and driving more and more species into extinction. The very web of life on which we depend is being ripped and frayed.
WE FIND IT hard to imagine making the massive changes that are now necessary to solve the crisis. And when large truths are genuinely inconvenient, whole societies ignore them. Yet, as George Orwell reminds us, “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” Indeed, without realising it, we have begun to wage war on the Earth itself. We and the Earth’s climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: ‘Mutually assured destruction’.
More than two decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and smoke into the air that it would block life-giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing a ‘nuclear winter’. Their eloquent warnings helped galvanise the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear arms race.
Now science is warning us that if we do not quickly reduce the global warming pollution that is trapping much of the heat our planet normally radiates back out of the atmosphere, we are in danger of creating a permanent ‘carbon summer’.
But neither need be our fate. It is time to make peace with the planet We must quickly mobilise our civilisation with the urgency and resolve that have previously been seen only when nations mobilised for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the eleventh hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a mortal challenge.
These were not comforting and misleading assurances that the threat was not real or imminent; that it would affect others but not ourselves; that ordinary life might be lived even in the presence of extraordinary threat; that Providence could be trusted to do for us what we would not do for ourselves. No, these were calls to come to the defence of the common future. They were calls upon the courage, generosity and strength of entire peoples, citizens of every class and condition who were ready to stand against the threat once asked to do so.
Now comes the threat of climate crisis – a threat that is real, rising, imminent, and universal. Once again, it is the eleventh hour. The penalties for ignoring this challenge are immense and growing, and at some near point will be unrecoverable. For now, we still have the power to choose our fate, and the remaining question is only this: have we the will to act vigorously and in time, or will we remain imprisoned by a dangerous illusion?
The truth – once known – has the power to set us free. Truth also has the power to unite us and bridge the distance between ‘me’ and ‘we’, creating the basis for common effort and shared responsibility. There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer. They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action. We need to adopt principles, values, laws and treaties that release creativity and initiative at every level of society in multifold responses originating concurrently and spontaneously.
This new consciousness requires expanding the possibilities inherent in all humanity. The innovators who will devise a new way to harness the sun’s energy for pennies or invent an engine that is carbon negative may live in Lagos or Mumbai or Montevideo. We must ensure that entrepreneurs and inventors everywhere on the globe have the chance to change the world.
When we unite for a moral purpose that is manifestly good and true, the spiritual energy unleashed can transform us. The generation that defeated fascism throughout the world in the 1940s found, in rising to meet their awesome challenge, that they had gained the moral authority and long-term vision to launch the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and a new level of global co-operation and foresight that unified Europe and facilitated the emergence of democracy and prosperity in Germany, Japan, Italy and much of the world.
THE WORLD NEEDS an alliance – especially of those nations that weigh heaviest in the scales where Earth is in the balance. I salute Europe and Japan for the steps they’ve taken in recent years to meet the challenge, and the new government in Australia, which has made solving the climate crisis its first priority. But the outcome will be decisively influenced by two nations that are now failing to do enough: the United States and China. While India is also growing fast in importance, it should be absolutely clear that it is the two largest CO2 emitters that will need to make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act. Both countries should stop using the other’s behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment.
These are the last few years of decision, but they can be the first years of a bright and hopeful future if we do what we must. No-one should believe a solution will be found without effort, without cost, without change. If we wish to redeem squandered time and speak again with moral authority, then these are the hard truths.
The way ahead is difficult. The outer boundary of what we currently believe is feasible is still far short of what we actually must do. Moreover, between here and there, across the unknown, falls the shadow. That is just another way of saying that we have to expand the boundaries of what is possible. In the words of the poet Antonio Machado, “Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk.”
Extracts from the lecture given by Al Gore when he received the Nobel Prize for Peace on 10th December 2007. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2007
